Make your staff more flexible,Jaiswal tells Jairam

“We would count on your support in the effort to arrive at a balanced approach that would resolve the contentious issues confronting the stakeholders in different energy sectors.” Describing the MoEF’s argument that difficult blocks have been given to the private operators as “unwarranted”,the minister reminded that the blocks which were identified for allocation for captive use were offered to private players without making any distinction between difficult or easily workable mines. “The very fact that Coal India Limited itself has more than 100 coal projects awaiting Stage-1 or Stage-11 approval for a period of more than 150 days is proof enough to establish that CIL is also facing difficulties similar to the ones being faced by private operators. A majority of these projects are pending for more than three years,” he said.

“The conclusion that you have drawn that difficult blocks have alone been allotted to the private operators is thus unwarranted and I would urge you to appreciate the position described herein and acknowledge that this has not happened by design,” Jaiswal contended. Ruling out the allocation of alternate coal blocks against those falling in the No Go areas as “simply not workable”,the coal minister reminded Ramesh that there was no provision in the extant policy to this effect and also that no equivalent blocks were available as the ones that could have been possible substitutes already stood allocated. “Moreover,the action in making categorization of forest areas applicable retrospectively has resulted in introducing considerable uncertainty for many project proponents since in most cases they have made significant progress on tie-ups for the end use plants involving massive investments and facing potentially insurmountable hurdles at this stage is jeopardizing their entire project.”

Arguing that there was no real ground for the MoEF to question the adequacy of the mining plans being approved by his ministry,Jaiswal said these plans were being vetted by the Standing Committee headed by Coal Secretary C Balakrishnan and the panel comprised of eminent domain experts. “You will appreciate that intimating on prior approval from the environmental angle before taking up exploration will only delay matters and worsen the situation,” he argued.